this is a Dear John lettern. informal – a
letter from a woman to a man, ending a personal relationship.

I like eating breakfast
with you. Waking up late and wandering down the stairs to see a pile
of toast on the table, no longer hot but still warm enough for butter
to melt on it. On early days I take out honey, and try to convince
you that it gives your coffee a more sophisticated edge, but you
drink it with too much cream and too much sugar anyway. You laugh at
me downing cold bird's nest after I finish my toast and your toast,
but I know you're just jealous my grandmother sends me cartons of
little jars of bird's nest whenever I sound tired on the phone.

It strikes me as funny
now, when I look at the clock and the time is 01:22 am, but I turn
over and go back to sleep. Or rather – carry on with my imaginary
conversations with you in my head. In one, you flirt with me and for
once you render me speechless. Another, you declare your love for
someone else and I nod as if I understand, as if that explains
everything. Really, I would, and it would. I wish you were yourself
in my dreams. How much less heartbreaking that would be, more
convincing. "I love you" and "cheer up" are always
therapeutic in defusing situations.

I know I shouldn't be
writing you a letter, or singing you a song from a friend's
apartment, the words barely carried over the pulsating beat of music,
blaring. But you wouldn't have wanted to hear it from me in person,
anyway. I can't imagine us walking in a park bordered with
bougainvillea and umbrella canopies – I can't imagine leaving you
behind if we were walking together.

Before we knew each
other, I saw you around. I never imagined you'd be the boy to make
me feel like my entirely unglamorous existence and depression was
actually worth my while. I don't know about you, I don't know if
I even know you, hell. I would like to fall in love with you though,
very, very desperately. You and your silences that are always noisier
than they seem, your pretentious gravity that pulls you into my
orbit, your little needs that I find endearing, the mystery of your
lips, all of that.

I always have dramatic
exits, so this is a first time I'm leaving without tears, without
flowers, without waves. I give to you a paper bag of letters and an
agglomeration of scrap paper and notes, all written to you, just that
I never bothered to let you read them. Fan mail, all your fan mail
from me.

Stop to smell the
flowers, sometimes.

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